The Valhalla Exchange - Jack Higgins [2]
'Hugo?'
'What is it you want, senor?' The voice was the merest whisper.
'I would like to see the body of Senor Ricardo Bauer.'
'Perhaps in the morning, senor.'
'Rafael Mareno sent me.'
There was a pause, then the grille was closed. There was the sound of bolts being withdrawn, the door creaked open. He stood there, an oil lamp in one hand, very old, very frail, almost as if one of his own charges had decided to get up and walk. I slipped inside, he closed the door.
'You will follow me, please?'
He led the way along a short passage and opened an oaken door and I could smell death instantly, the cloying sweetness of it heavy on the cold air. I hesitated, then followed him through.
The room into which I entered was a place of shadows, a single oil lamp suspended from a chain in the centre supplying the only light. It was a waiting mortuary of a type I had seen a couple of times before in Palermo and Vienna, although the Viennese version had been considerably more elaborate. There were perhaps a dozen coffins on the other side of the room, but first he led me up some steps to a small platform on which stood a desk and chair.
I gazed down into the shadows in fascination. Each coffin was open, a corpse clearly visible inside, the stiff fingers firmly entwined in one end of a string that went up over a pulley arrangement, across to the desk where the other end was fastened to an old-fashioned bell that hung from a wall bracket.
He put down his lamp. I said, 'Has anyone ever rung that thing?'
'The bell?' I saw now that he was very old, eighty at least, the face desiccated, the eyes moist. 'Once, senor, ten years ago. A young girl. But she died again three days later. Her father refused to acknowledge the fact. He kept her with him for a month. Finally the police had to intervene.'
'I can see how they would have to.'
He opened a ledger and dipped a pen in an inkwell. 'Your relationship to Senor Bauer, senor? I must enter it in the official record.'
I took out my wallet and produced another of those ten-dollar bills. 'Nothing so formal, my friend. I'm just a newspaperman, passing through. I heard the story and thought I might recognize him.'
He hesitated, then laid down the pen. 'As you say, senor.' He picked up the lamp. 'This way.'
It was the end coffin on the back row and I received something of a shock as the old man raised his lamp to reveal red lips, a gleam of teeth, full, rounded cheeks. And then I realized, of course, that the undertaker had been going to work on him. It was as if a wax tailor's dummy had been laid out for my inspection, a totally unreal face heavy with make-up, resembling no photo that I had ever seen. But how could he hope to, thirty years on? A big, big difference between forty-five and seventy-five.
When the bell jangled, I almost jumped out of my skin and then realized it had sounded from outside. Hugo said, 'You will excuse me, senor. There is someone at the door.'
He shuffled off, leaving me there beside Bauer's coffin. If there had been rings, they'd taken them off, and the powerful fingers were intertwined on his chest, the string between them. They'd dressed him in a neat blue suit, white collar, dark tie. It really was rather remarkable.
I became aware of the voices outside in the corridor, one unmistakably American. 'You speak English? No?'
Then the same voice continuing in bad Spanish, 'I must see the body of the man Bauer. I've come a long way and my time is limited.'
Hugo tried to protest. 'Senor - it is late,' but he was obviously brushed aside.
'Where is the body? In here?'
For some reason, some sixth sense operating if you like, I moved back into the darkness of the corner. A moment later I was glad that I had.
He stepped into the room and paused, white hair gleaming in the lamplight, rain glistening on his military raincoat, shoulders